Making left-handedness sound worse than it is...
From Dictionary.com Word of the Day:
The left side of anything is often considered to be unlucky or bad, and our language reflects this. A "left-handed compliment," one that is insincere, backhanded, or dubious, is not one you are happy to receive; a "left-handed oath" is one not intended to be binding. Sinister, Latin for left, suggests or threatens evil. Gauche is tactless, awkward and clumsy, but droit, the French word for right, gives us adroit, "skillful," and dexter, the Latin for right, gives us dexterous (also meaning skillful). If you are ambidextrous, able to use both hands with equal facility, then, etymologically speaking, you have right hands on both sides (ambi-, "on both sides"). Left itself comes from Old English lyft, left, "weak, useless," since it names the hand which in most people is weaker.
Well, damn.
The left side of anything is often considered to be unlucky or bad, and our language reflects this. A "left-handed compliment," one that is insincere, backhanded, or dubious, is not one you are happy to receive; a "left-handed oath" is one not intended to be binding. Sinister, Latin for left, suggests or threatens evil. Gauche is tactless, awkward and clumsy, but droit, the French word for right, gives us adroit, "skillful," and dexter, the Latin for right, gives us dexterous (also meaning skillful). If you are ambidextrous, able to use both hands with equal facility, then, etymologically speaking, you have right hands on both sides (ambi-, "on both sides"). Left itself comes from Old English lyft, left, "weak, useless," since it names the hand which in most people is weaker.
Well, damn.
// 2/22/2004 
